April 2009

I recently saw Gomorrah, which took the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, and was definitely intrigued and curious as to the origins of the beastly, monolithic sail-like housing complexes where the movie was shot. La Vele di Scampia, or the Sails of Scampia was an offshoot of the post-war modernist social housing explosion gripping the world, including Naples, Italy where it was located. Each complex, shaped like a sail, consists of apartment units with stairs leading to central walkways on each floor. The result is a spectacularly open public space in which people can see and be seen.

Today we would like to introduce you to UK based illustrator/designer, Jeffrey Bowman whose work has been influenced by everything from space exploration and the wonders of the universe to the intricacies of type face creation and pattern repetition.

Ladislav Sutnar was born in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia on november 9, 1897. He was educated in Prague. In 1939 he traveled to New York as an exhibition designer for the Czech Pavilion at the World’s Fair. Due to the war he ended up staying in New York and was later hired by Sweet’s Catalog Service. It was here along with Sweet’s research director K Lonberg Holm that Sutnar would produce a body of work that would help to lay the foundation of information design as we know it today. One of the books to spawn from that partnership was Catalog Design Progress. The book chronicles the pair’s thoughts and experimentations with the layout and organization of information.

A twibe is a group of Twitter users interested in a common topic who would like to be able to communicate with each other. On each twibe’s page, there is a list of twibe members. There is also a tweet stream that lists tweets from twibe members which contain key word tag.

Wayne Pate runs a whimsical design studio in Brooklyn, NY called GoodShapeDesign. He has the best doodles, and also sells playful prints on his website. Today, we have the pleasure of getting the Grain’s Eye View on Wayne’s studio, including info on his favorite objects and some handy organizing advice.

Holy twit! It doesn’t stop! Designers seem to be jumping on Twitter left and right. It’s turning out to be an awesome community of designers. If you haven’t made the Twitter jump yet, then here’s a little more incentive. And if you’re already up on Twitter, here are some new faces.

Some of the new people on the list include House Industries, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Ministry of Type, Monocle, Chris Glass, Jason Munn, and Kid Robot among others.

Advice to Sink in Slowly is a great idea. It’s an ongoing series of posters designed by recent graduates aimed at helping and inspiring first year students. All incoming students at participating Universities receive one of the posters.

German based designer, Till Wiedeck, really melts my heart with his fabulous collection of type. This particular typeface, titled “HM Melt,” was inspired by a simple letter “a” found in a mid-’70s edition of The World of Logotypes by Al Cooper. It’s terrifically impressive that he was able to create such a fresh typeface solely based around the shape of one letter. I really love his experimentation with geometry and the positioning of various drops, simulating that the type is really melting!

I’m really impressed by this work from Richard Perez. His typographic and illustration work is super fancy. He seems to have no problem navigating styles as well as tackling a variety of design projects — his work ranges from hand drawn type and illustration, to identity and traditional design. All of his work is direct, and compelling with great execution and color palettes.

It’s really refreshing to see the enthusiasm and personality in all of Richard’s work. It’s also nice to see that we share a few things in common, including VHS tapes, Lincoln, and kittens.

Rilla Alexander is a member of the well known and respected art and design collective, Rinzen. The group’s posters and album covers have been exhibited at the Louvre and their large scale artwork installed in Tokyo’s Zero Gate and Copenhagen’s Hotel Fox. Today she gives Grain Edit readers a sneak peek into her studio and shares some of her favorite objects.

What young German boy wouldn’t want a book filled with Spargel, Spatz, Specht and Schwable? (most of those were birds..but one was asparagus. I’ll let you guess which one.) This alphabet book is filled with those little dudes. If I ever go to Germany, I’m taking this book with me. I’ll be name dropping German nouns all day. This is the OG way to learn a language. Watch out Rosetta Stone!

Welcome to the latest addition to the Grain Edit interview series. But wait, there’s a twist! We sneaked a book review into the mix as well. I know, very tricky.

Our latest interviewees are Andre Andreev and Dan Covert. They’re from New York City, and they’re known as Dress Code. They recently published a book entitled Never Sleep, which details their experience and transition from design students to design professionals. Never Sleep is a practical and vital guide for design graduates wondering what to do after school.

At the combined age of (roughly) 50 Andre and Dan’s work has been recognized by I.D., CommArts, Print, Graphis, Metropolis, The Type Directors Club, The Art Directors Club, CMYK, HOW, Adobe, Steps Field Guide to Emerging Talent and Young Guns. They met while studying graphic design at California College of the Arts and worked at MTV before starting Dress Code.

Fascinating photos from Frederic Chaubin. Many of his images feature strange buildings from the former Soviet Union. Most of the structures were built during the 1970s and 80s and look like something straight out of Sci-fi movie.

Finnish designer and illustrator, Janine Rewell, has a wonderful way of fusing colorful detailed illustrations with clean, simple type. There are surprises in every corner of her work, this piece being no exception.

Created for the Helsinki in Berlin music festival in 2008, we see a lot of musical imagery, with guitars, flutes, and keyboards hiding throughout the illustration. I especially like that there are even tinier images playfully hiding within the text. It reminds me of playing “Hidden Picture” while reading old Highlights magazines at the Dentist’s office as a kid. I also enjoy Rewell’s use of wine bottle and martini glass buildings. Although densely clustered, her composition is right on, implying “”We’re gonna drink, listen to good tunes, and have fun!” Wahoo!

Very happy to run across the work of Kevin Dart this morning — he has some serious talent going on. His rough textures and sketchy illustration style combine so nicely with the clean 60’s style graphics and type. His work feels like a perfect fit for Seijun Suzuki’s gangster movies. And I love an airplane with a swoosh. I also want that suitcase. So yummy.

Thanks to the wonderful folks over at DaWanda for inviting us to curate a collection of our favorite items from their website. DaWanda is a European based marketplace for artists and designers to sell their work.

Holy tweet! Designers and Twitter seem to go great together. Since we posted our 50 (or so) favorites last month we’ve seen a lot of new designers popping up on Twitter, and we forgot to mention some designers as well. We decided an update was in order.

Some of the new faces on the list include ISO50, Invisible Creature, Design Sponge, Okay Great, The Dieline, Wink, and more.

The next addition to the Grain Edit interview series takes us to Philadelphia: City of Brotherly Love, home of founding father Ben Franklin and the Liberty Bell, and double agent Tim Gough. A man of mystery, by day, Tim works as the Art Director for the Philadelphia Weekly. By night, he emerges from the cheese steak littered streets of Philly to do one thing: rid the world of dull illustrations.

Tim successfully melds images of spies and monstrous creatures with bursts of color, densely clustered patterns and rough textures, creating dynamically rich works. In this interview, he discusses his hometown and background, perplexing experiences after college, influences, and his creative process.

The fine folks at Lars Muller have just published an excellent book titled Corporate Diversity: Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy. I know alot of designers (myself included) that are extremely excited over the release of this book. It chronicles the work of the design studio J.R Geigy AG which was a launching pad for one of the great periods of Swiss graphic design, in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s amazing to see the quantity and quality of the designers associated with Geigy. Under the leadership of Max Schmid for many years, the studio employed Roland Aeschlimann, Karl Gerstner, Jörg Hamburger, Steff Geissbuhler, Andreas His, Toshihiro Katayama, and Nelly Rudin, among others. Freelance designers such as Michael Engelmann, Gottfried Honegger, Armin Hofmann, Herbert Leupin, Warja Lavater, Numa Rick, and Niklaus Stoecklin were also used. In the 1960s, the Basel office, most especially George Giusti and Fred Troller, was involved in developing the studios of the subsidiaries in the United States and the United Kingdom, placing more emphasis on advertising. This is the first comprehensive presentation of Geigy design, an important Swiss contribution to the international history of design.

Wow! Super snappy new work from Wink. Wink is always on-point design-wise, and this is no different. Their latest work is for Rebel Green, a new aesthetically conscious and eco-friendly company with products aimed at reducing and reusing.

I love the illustration and typographic work throughout the product line — it harkens back to a simpler and more honest time. I’ll admit I’m not the best at washing before ingesting fruit, so this very well might be what I need. How about them apples!

Designer and blogger, Michelle McCormick, has an incredible eye for collecting an array of bits and baubles. Her bookshelves house a wonderful assortment of books, colorful stamps, and tons of interesting objects, all of which are featured on her blog Inspiration Resource. Michelle has a great eye for intricate details, and her blog showcases various themed collections, posted daily as sources of inspiration.

Michelle happily shares all of these things with the readers of Grain Edit. Enjoy!

More Andrew Holder! Here at Grain Edit we love Andrew’s work, and it’s awesome to see him popping up in more shows and galleries. We just want to see his work up here in the Bay Area! I guess we’ll have to wait. But if you are down south, be sure to check out Andrew’s show in San Diego at Subtext Gallery & Design Bookstore. It’s going on until April 26th.

Press release from Subtext Gallery: Andrew Holder is a recent graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and his talent has earned him shows in Australia, San Francisco, and now in his home away from home, San Diego. Andrew has already built up a steady flow of clientele, including Roxy, Poketo, National Geographic, The Toronto Times, and Arkitip Magazine. He was born in St. Augustine, Florida, but spent most of his youth growing up in San Diego. His work has a hint of Scandinavian folk-art with a modern-day twist. Sleepy seaside towns and country landscapes are prominent in his pieces, made up of simple geometric shapes and organic line work. Andrew’s pieces are memorable, distinct, and beautifully engaging.

Deejay OM is a long time friend of mine. We used to roll around Northern California hitting busted record shacks and dirt malls while bragging about our latest private press lp scores. The man has an insane record collection. He’s the guy with the Og PI-R Square 45 you wish you had. Make that 10 copies you wish you had. Every first Wednesday of the month at the Attic in the Mission district of San Francisco OM along with DJ MAKossa lay down some seriously rare grooves. For tonight’s show (April 1st 2009) they will be showing the 1978 Brazilian Psychedelic horror flick Hallucinations of a deranged mind to accompany the music.

Today for grain edit readers OM and MAKossa have prepared 2 special live sets. They drop everything from raw American psych to spaced out funky electronics ala Pierre Henry. OM starts off his set with a classic psych cut by Animated Egg and eventually works into a track off his Reheated Naan and Curry lp that is so hard that it will break your face. MAKossa serves up a killer Turkish track, Jamaican chatter and drums thicker then a hippopotamus covered in maple syrup.

One of our favorite illustrators from the Pacific Northwest is Ward Jenkins. He has to be one of the busiest guys in the biz. He creates amazing illustrations, chats it up on twitter, contributes to Drawn!, maintains several flickr groups (here and here), runs a fantastic blog (his blog is one of the first blogs I started reading) and on top of all this he just completed his first children’s book, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in June 2009. I’m starting to think that Ward is not one person, but rather a small organization with one heck of a cool name.

Ward just released 7 new prints in his Ward-O -Matic Etsy Shop (I know, he has a shop too, where does get the time?) To celebrate he’s holding a giveaway. To enter you have to leave a comment on this post by 11:59 midnight PST on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009. The winners will be announced on Friday, April 3rd.